‘We left before the three days were up, because of the translation, ya Abu Nada!’
‘What translation?’ So I told him. He laughed, and made peace with my mother.
Their many rows following his release from detention didn’t trouble me, so their decision to separate hit me like a thunderbolt.
Chapter four
Mahariq
My father didn’t write about his years of detention, nor did he talk about them. Perhaps my interest in prison memoirs – which began with a collection of whatever I could find concerning Wahaat Detention Centre – had its origins in my desire to know the details of my father’s life during the five years I lived apart from him: the cell he stayed in, the bed he slept in, the food he ate, the corridor he traversed when he went in or out, the kind of work that was demanded of him, and his relations with his prison-mates and his gaolers. My imagination, where my father was concerned, was restricted by the dearth of memories preceding his arrest, while the period between his arrest and his release is a blank, alleviated only by occasional meetings in a dingy room inside a gloomy building, which we reached after an arduous journey on whose end we congratulated each other when the building loomed before us in the distance, in the bleak pallor of the desert.
For five years, my imagination roamed aimlessly in search of a place to alight. Then, when prison memoirs started to emerge, one after another, I began reading them avidly, filling the gaps in my imagination with solid details, which cut like barbed wire. The newly acquired knowledge, however cruel, helped safeguard me against these gaping holes, erecting a bridge by which it was possible to pass from one level to another and reach that point at which Nada’s story and her own personal history was interrupted, and her father was restored to her intact, despite everything.
I could describe Urdy Abu Zab‘al with its six wards. I could describe Wahaat Detention Centre with its three wards, number one of which was designated for convicted Communists, number two for detainees such as my father, who hadn’t been tried or convicted, and number three for members of the Muslim Brotherhood. I know the location of the ten cells in each ward, of the toilets, and of the officer’s room that faces the gate to the ward. My imagination can follow my father at ‘Azab Prison in Fayoum, then at Liman Tora, and then for four years at Mahariq Prison in the oases. At this last prison I can put together an image of my father waking up in the morning in one of the ten cells that were in Ward Number Two; I can picture him then going out barefoot into Scorpion Valley carrying a pickaxe for breaking up rock. His attention would be divided between his labour and keeping his eyes and ears alert for any sudden movement or sound betraying a viper that might leap all at once from its lair and deliver its fatal bite. I imagine him when it’s time to return to the ward for supper and after that, following evening activities, a cup of tea.
I turn quickly the pages that deal with torture, but take my time reading those that tell of the farm, the theatre, and the mosque, all of which they established in that sea of sand. I contemplate Abdel Azim Anis as he recalls what he taught to students at London University. He would write complex mathematical equations on the floor of the cell, acceding to the wishes of Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed, who wanted to learn. I fix my gaze upon imprisoned doctors who saved the life of the warden’s son, and the surgeon who performed an operation with the equipment on hand (and without anaesthetics) for Sergeant Mutawi, who had given orders for torture. I commit the scenes to memory like the stanzas of Fouad Haddad:
All through the night
I see the full moon slivered
I see the full moon slivered behind bars
I see the full moon slivered behind bars and its night is long.
At school I studied the lines from Imru al-Qays:
Night like sea waves has dropped its curtains
Upon me with a multitude of woes to try me.
So I said to it when, camel-like, it stretched its back,
Lowered its hindquarters and crouched under its own weight,
Oh long night, disperse,
Though daylight be no brighter.
But how was a girl in the first year of senior school to grasp the meaning behind these lines? How could she comprehend this complex imagery of alienation? A cavernous night of afflictions coming one upon the other like sea-waves, it surrounds you; you shoulder its burdens like a she-camel defying gravity, but in vain; you try to find release by looking toward morning, but give up the attempt; night or day, desert or sea, space open or closed, motion or stillness, present or future: no difference, no escape.
Many years later I understood, and when I did, I found myself making a connection between Imru al-Qays’s lines and those of his distant descendant, Fouad Haddad:
I don’t want dawn to come . . . oh people, I don’t want it.
Each time dawn comes, I . . . I, poor anguished soul
Wherever my father kissed me, there they beat me;
Wherever my mother kissed me, there they beat me,
Beatings like insults to your injured womb.
For what did you carry me in your womb, nourish me on your food?
For what did you call me by my name – and they call me
By a number written on the skullcap, the mattress, and the blanket?
For what, my mother, did we read,
For what did I go to school,
Learn the alphabet?
For what, the books, the indexes, the tests, the Eid gifts?
For what, my mother, did I start out human?
Abdel Latif has inherited your son to be one more of his slaves,
Abdel Latif Rushdie is his lord,
Abdel Latif Rushdie is a knight astride the government’s horse,
With an owl inscribed on his face:
Behind him goes catastrophe, before him a cudgel.
I heard these lines for the first time at university, and I memorised them, although it took years for me to learn their context. Take, for example, this line, which might not be the most eloquent of those selected: ‘Abdel Latif Rushdie is a knight astride the government’s horse.’ We need only infer that Abdel Latif Rushdie is one of the officers who tortured the detainees in order to understand this line. But its meaning is still incomplete, perhaps even deficient, falling far short of a context that infuses the picture with history, facts, agonies: insults and abuse, kickings, starvation and terror. Beatings on the head and face, beatings on the neck and back, beatings on the chest and stomach, the arms and legs, the feet. Beatings with canes, with truncheons, with palm-branches, with leather straps, with shoes. Blows delivered by the hands and kicks by the feet, lashes with whips, flayings. It was ‘Do as you’re told by the sergeant, you son of a bitch!’ ‘Say, “I’m a woman,” you son of a whore!’ and ‘Abdel Latif Rushdie is a knight astride the government’s horse,’ presiding over the action and carrying it out, torturing a line of men being transported to hard labour, their bodies emaciated, faces pale, clothing threadbare, hands ulcerated, feet cracked and swollen with suppurating wounds, descending into a trench to break up basalt under armed guard. ‘Abdel Latif Rushdie is a knight astride the government horse.’ He tortures Shuhdi Atiyya to the point of death – and he dies.
And Abdel Latif Rushdie, although alone in the poem, brings with him other officers, whose names, traits, words and actions the context supplies for us – the lords and masters of the prison: Major-general Ismail Hemmat, Major Hasan Mounir, Captain Mourgane Ishaq and Second Lieutenant Yunus Mar‘i, among others.
Take for example Major Fouad, who led the campaigns for torturing the Muslim Brothers in the Citadel and Abu Za‘bal prisons during the 1950s. He looks well settled-in behind his desk, in full uniform, where he directs operations. Abusive obscenities first, then punches and kicks, followed by blindfolding and suspending the prisoner naked, to deliver electric shocks to him and extinguish cigarettes on his body repeatedly, from every side.
Is this major in fact Major-general Fouad, who keeps appearing on the satellite channe
ls with his silver hair and his elegant suit, speaking earnestly and without batting an eye, no tremor in his voice, no twitch in his hands or any part of his face, answering questions addressed to him by the host, who has introduced him as an expert on terrorism and sanctioned organisations?
I talk to Hazem a great deal about my desire to write a book that deals comprehensively with the prison experience. I tell him about each new book I acquire. (I was eager to get my hands on whatever books I could find that addressed this subject. There was a fairly good library available to me that housed biographies of the political prisoners at Mahariq Prison in the oases, the military prison; Citadel and Tora prisons, Abu Za‘bal, Istinaf and Qanatir in Cairo; Hadra Prison in Alexandria; and ‘Azab Prison in Fayoum. Later I added to it new books on similar experiences at Al-Khiam Detention Centre in southern Lebanon, at Israeli prisons, at Tazmamart in Morocco and Robben Island in South Africa.)
Hazem accuses me of being self-destructive, and says I’m not going to write a book, that I’m merely addicted to reading these accounts, which leave me depressed: ‘You’ll never write this book!’ he says. ‘Anyway, it’s an impossible task – how could you cover all these experiences in one book?’
Angry with him, I cut him off for a few weeks, and then we meet again for lunch or dinner. I’m hoping he won’t reopen the discussion. And at our reconciliation get-together he doesn’t broach the subject. But afterward he reverts as usual, and brings it up again, so we quarrel – or not, because I tell him about some of the paradoxes I intend to include in the book. He laughs when I tell him about Abdel Sadiq, the gaoler who, exhausted from the exertion of beating the detainees and showing signs of the onset of a heart attack, began shouting at them, ‘You sons of bitches, is there no mercy in your hearts?’ And Oukal, who confided to one of the prisoners, in something of an apologetic tone, that he was just the warden’s lackey, and only following orders: ‘When you get out of here, go into government and give me Abdel Latif Rushdie, and I’ll beat him . . . give me Gamal Abdel Nasser himself, and I’ll beat him, too – I do the government’s bidding. I tell you it’s happened before your time, and I tell you it’ll happen again afterward.’
Or the incident when the prisoners were shaved – their hair, eyebrows and pubes. Hazem says, ‘I’ve heard that one before – everyone’s written about it.’ ‘But I can tell you more. The prisoner who’s just been shaved goes back to his ward, more naked than the day his mother gave birth to him, and is surprised when his cellmate looks him up and down and says, “Who are you?” ’
I didn’t talk to Hazem, or anyone else for that matter, about the mouse incident that was cited in the testimonial of an inmate at Tadmur Prison in Syria. With his own eyes he witnessed another inmate being forced to swallow a dead mouse. I couldn’t bear to recall that tale, whether in imagination or in conversation, though it haunted me for weeks, even in my sleep, when it came back to me in nightmares. But I told Hazem about the Spanish woman who wrote about her prison experience during the reign of Franco. ‘This woman formed an extraordinary friendship in solitary confinement. She got to be friends with someone whose movements she followed in the cell, and who was her constant companion, observing her and talking to her all the time, telling her about herself and her husband and her three children, who’d been farmed out to three different families, because her husband was also a prisoner.’
‘Didn’t you say she was in solitary confinement? How could this friend reach her?’
‘Guess.’
‘Was it a tree?’
‘No.’
‘A bird?’
‘No. I don’t remember whether there was any access to the cell. Perhaps the wall had no openings at all.’
‘A model she traced on the wall of the cell?’
‘No.’
‘Then she must have summoned up her friend in her imagination.’
‘No.’
‘I’m stumped.’
‘The friend she loved and depended on was . . . a fly.’
There was a long silence. Finally I broke it. ‘I’m going to write a chapter of my book on this woman.’
‘Are you going to write about political detention in Egypt, or in the world?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you’ve been saying that you’d drawn up a plan for the book.’
‘I have three plans.’
‘Good heavens!’
‘There’s no need for mockery.’
‘All right, then let’s talk seriously. Plan number one?’
‘A book on the experiences of Egyptian prisoners at Mahariq, concluding with a chapter on my father.’
‘Dozens of people who’ve lived through that experience have recorded it – what would you add to their accounts?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘All right, then. Plan number two?’
‘An edited volume, each chapter of which contains a selection from the writings of political prisoners from a particular country, Arab or non-Arab. I would edit the book and introduce it with a general study of the subject.’
‘And plan number three?’
I faltered a moment. Then I said, ‘I forget!’
I hadn’t forgotten, but I was embarrassed to talk about my intention to write a novel that would invert the usual order of things, whereby it is those living outside the prison who are the prisoners, not the other way round. The idea was very tempting, but it was just an idea, one that crossed my mind from time to time, and had come to seem like the germ of some sort of literary enterprise. I’m not a novelist, so where did I come up with this mad idea of writing a novel, anyway?
Chapter five
Translation problems II
In the beginning, it was a honeymoon. A resplendent month, it extended spontaneously into the months that followed. The days leading up to it were like wedding celebrations, the house rocked by a feverish commotion of joy – and the guests, the good wishes, the ‘Hamdillah ‘a-ssalaama,’ ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ ‘Your presence illuminates the house’ . . . and the chocolates, the sweets, baskets of fruit, flowers, and the potted houseplants delivered by one of the florist’s employees, each with a greeting card bearing the name of whoever had sent it.
My grandmother came from the village, bringing stuffed pigeons and ducks, and salted rice pudding. She also brought another gift, entrusted to her by my aunt (for the festivities in no way mitigated against her vow never again to darken the door of her sister-in-law’s house). My aunt sent fiteer pastry and meneyn biscuits, as well as dates and pomegranates. (My mother tasted none of this – she declared that it hadn’t been intended for her, and that it wouldn’t be right for her to eat any of it.) My father’s relatives – cousins on both his father’s side and his mother’s – brought cartons filled with bags of rice, flour, lentils, sugar, bottles of oil and soap, as well as bottled sherbet. The kitchen filled up with pies, cakes and petits fours, brought by my parents’ friends.
My mother went off to work lively, and came home livelier still, buzzing around like a bee, greeting people, bidding them goodbye, welcoming them, hosting them, laying the table, clearing it, all the while lighthearted and smiling. Lately we had engaged the services of a woman – the wife or sister of the bawaab, I think, or perhaps it was just someone he knew – to help us around the house. She would stand at the kitchen sink for hours, ceaselessly washing plates and cups, preparing tea and coffee, squeezing lemons and oranges and mixing sherbet with cold water.
I went to school, and when I returned home my feet had wings, as if I was flying to get to Eid. I didn’t spend a lot of time staring into the mirror to see what it was that was new about my face. The changes in my mother, though, were perfectly obvious to me. ‘Mama,’ I said to her, ‘you look prettier, and your voice is sweeter, too!’ She laughed. I don’t think it was her voice that had changed, but rather the cadence of her speech, which in retrospect I believe was smoother, just like the angles of her shoulders, spontaneously restored to their origi
nal soft curves. The difference seemed obvious to me on an intuitive level, even if I lacked both the knowledge and experience of people to understand these changes, and the facility to articulate them the way I can do now. My mother’s intense vitality – manifested in the swift agility of her movements and complemented by the sweetness of her gaze – had hardened during the period of my father’s absence. The lines of her body had grown angular and harsh, as if to express the effort of maintaining her composure and keeping her anxiety in check. But the strain showed in the unevenness of her speech, her high-pitched voice, and the erratic motions of her head and limbs.
After a week or two, the private honeymoon commenced. A sense of calm – pure and fine, novel and altogether strange – united the three of us. My mother and I no longer picked quarrels with each other, she no longer shouted, or spoke or moved in that spasmodic way that had made me think she was mad. In light of these new developments, I concluded that she was not mad after all, that rather she must have been in a bad way, exhausted, and frightened for my father. Or perhaps she had been mad, and was now well again. I began to relax into my life with my parents. Gradually I regained that childhood paradise from which I had fallen abruptly one winter morning, incomprehensibly, unreasonably.
I needed no wings to fly – I could soar even when I was chained to my seat in the classroom. Lessons were enjoyable, the teacher amiable, my classmates the nicest of God’s creations. I even approached the one-eyed beggar, who used to stand at the top of the street where my school was, and whose appearance frightened me so that I hurried past him without looking in his direction. I asked him his name, and took to saying, ‘Good morning, ‘Amm Darwish!’ and giving him whatever I could spare – my pocket money if I had remembered to bring any, or the sandwich my mother had made for me, or a piece of chocolate if I happened to have some with me.